Since the 2008 economic crisis, the ballooning global debt has increased from $20 trillion to over $240 trillion. With this exponential growth of indebtedness and an unresolvable crisis of accumulation, capitalism is losing its grip. The effects of this crisis are felt no more clearly than within the maquiladora sweatshops on the northern border of Mexico.

The world economy is in poor shape and the American economy is in even worse condition. The 2008 crisis has not been resolved and many analysts fear a new financial explosion. Capital continues to stay clear of investment in production and is trying to recover without running up more debts. Company returns are low, profit rates are decreasing. Capital is moving more and more into speculation.

The leading article in this issue of Revolutionary Perspectives [13], “A Decade On from the Financial Crash” focuses on both the state of the world economy and the dangerous ways in which the capitalist world order proposes to deal with it in 2019. · It is not just the analysis of revolutionaries that predicts trouble ahead.

In 1992 the editors of Socialist Organiser, the newspaper of the Socialist Campaign for a Labour Victory, launched an organisation under the name of Alliance for Workers’ Liberty (AWL). The particular brand of Trotskyism with which the AWL identifies is strongly influenced by its leader Sean Matgamna, who has been active on the Trotskyist left since the sixties.

On this day exactly a century ago Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were brutally murdered in cold blood by Freikorps troops under the command of the Social Democratic Party. It decapitated the leadership of the young German Communist Party which then oscillated between putschism and opportunism for the rest of its existence.

We are publishing below the answer to the critical remarks that the comrades of the International Group of the Communist Left made on our article "A Decade After the Financial Crash" ( appeared on this site and in Revolutionary Perspectives 13. The comrades published our article, translated into French and English, in no.

It is often asserted by bourgeois and anarchist histories of the Russian Revolution that the Bolsheviks arrived in power in the soviets with a distinct plan in mind. The document which follows (which should be read alongside Ossinsky’s early criticism which we published as Ossinsky’s Criticism of State Capitalism in Russia at demonstrates quite clearly that the Bolsheviks had no plan at all.

The Origins of IWWD · International Working Women’s Day (IWWD) was initially spawned from within the workers’ movement, with the aim of drawing in more working women [1] to the fight for the protection of female labour. These workers’ demands included insurance for mother and child, and political rights for working women. [2] · The first unofficial “Women’s Day” took place in the U.S.A.

Two articles on the recent developments in the US and UK automotive industry. · Trump and the Crisis of General Motors · The urban myth Donald Trump peddled during the election campaign was that the USA would be the first country to get out of the crisis: soon the economy would be steaming ahead and multiple new jobs would be created. · Not a word of this is true.

Pictured: model of a proposed Monument to the Third International designed 1919-20 by Vladimir Tatlin and comrades. · A century ago, from 2nd — 6th March 1919, 52 delegates, more than 40 from various political organisations outside Russia, met in Moscow. During those five days the meeting became the First Congress of the Third International [1], also known as the Communist International,...

Since the 2008 economic crisis, the ballooning global debt has increased from $20 trillion to over $240 trillion. With this exponential growth of indebtedness and an unresolvable crisis of accumulation, capitalism is losing its grip. The effects of this crisis are felt no more clearly than within the maquiladora sweatshops on the northern border of Mexico.

The short review in Kommunist No. 1 of Lenin’s 1917 work The State and Revolution was not inserted just to fill a couple of pages. In April 1918 Bukharin had deliberate political intent. The bulk of Kommunist No. 1 is full of searing critiques of the dangers that the revolution faced after the reluctant signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

A spectre haunts the world today. It is the spectre of “socialism”. Commentators of left and right, of reactionary or reformist inclination, agree that “after three decades in the wilderness, socialism is back.” [1] · The same source goes on to say that: · Some 51% of Americans aged 18-29 have a positive view of socialism, says Gallup.

The production of the few issues of Kommunist in the spring of 1918 signalled a turning point in the revolution in Russia (although even its editors only dimly foresaw it). Everyone knew that without a world revolution the prospects for socialism in a country like Russia were poor. But, whilst waiting for the rest of the world to respond to the beacon of revolution lit in Russia, the question...

US humanitarian aid is now being concentrated in Cúcuta. It is the moment of truth for the plan designed by Guaidó and Leopoldo López [1]: to encourage a rebellion at the rank and file of the Venezuelan army by tempting them with the food and medicine shipments that their own families need. · 1 · As much as the "Lima Group" [2] has promised not to invade Venezuela, the move is a textbook example of...

The following translation comes from Kommunist #2 and was written in March/April 1918. There are two existing versions on and but looking at the original we realised that these are incomplete. They both appear to have been translated from an Italian version which was put out as a twelve page pamphlet by the Communist Party of Italy in the early 1920s.

Recent political events in Venezuela have once again brought to the fore its devastating economic situation. The struggle for power between Maduro and Guaidò, or between a fraudulently re-elected president and an opposition candidate who has proclaimed himself president, besides giving Venezuela a grotesque image, hides the real scenario of an economic and political human tragedy.

In evidence

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Agenda

06 Apr
Leicester Public Meeting

NO WAR BUT THE CLASS WAR

PUBLIC MEETING/DISCUSSION

As capitalism’s economic crisis deepens our rulers are determined to make the working class pay for it by increasing exploitation and reducing wages and living conditions.

All across the world, the capitalists and their political puppets are also trying to prevent any united working class fightback by widening divisions in the working class, such as nationality, race, ethnicity, religion, gender and sexual preference. The xenophobia whipped up before and after the Brexit campaign, the Trump election campaign and the election campaigns of nationalist governments in Hungary and Poland are a few recent examples of what is happening and what is to come.

At the same time national states are trying to push the crisis onto capitalists of other states or blocs of states by trade wars. And history tells us that trade wars are the prelude to shooting wars. While imperialist proxy wars continue to rage in the Middle East, Africa and Eastern Europe, and while a new conflict with Iran is being stoked up, increasingly intense global conflicts are being prepared.

Nationalism is the main tool being used to recruit workers to support their rulers in these wars. No faction of the capitalist class is worth supporting and none is “a lesser evil”! The alternative is not to do nothing. There are already voices being raised under the banner of “No war but the class war!” to challenge the fate that the capitalists are preparing for us.

Join them in a public meeting to find out more and make your own contribution:

From Iran to Mexico, a rising tide of strike actions across the globe shows that class resistance to the horrors of capitalism is still the "spectre that haunts" the capitalist class.

At the same time we are also encouraged by the appearance of new militants attracted to the ideas of Internationalist Communism — the only alternative to the abyss towards which capitalism is dragging the entire planet.

This meeting aims to deepen and extend that communist understanding in the convinced belief that without a clear communist political organisation the international working class will be left without a compass in the tumult ahead.

The CWO and our comrades in the ICT wrote some years ago: The revolutionary programme serves no purpose at all if it exists only in the minds of a limited number of “thinkers” who are deluded into assuming their ideas are being transmitted “to the class” when they appear in a journal of equally restricted readership, or on the html files of some site on the Internet.

More recently we have written: Our earnest hope is to engage with those new forces which do come to a consciousness of the need to overthrow the system, to give them a political compass, something to rally around, whilst at the same time, we seek dialogue with those forces which already exist to actively cooperate where possible, agree to disagree where necessary, and ultimately to unite as history inexorably moves on and a real class movement develops.

We welcome anyone interested in this vital task to come and discuss with us.

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From Iran to Mexico, a rising tide of strike actions across the globe shows that class resistance to the horrors of capitalism is still the "spectre that haunts" the capitalist class.

At the same time we are also encouraged by the appearance of new militants attracted to the ideas of Internationalist Communism — the only alternative to the abyss towards which capitalism is dragging the entire planet.

This meeting aims to deepen and extend that communist understanding in the convinced belief that without a clear communist political organisation the international working class will be left without a compass in the tumult ahead.

The CWO and our comrades in the ICT wrote some years ago: The revolutionary programme serves no purpose at all if it exists only in the minds of a limited number of “thinkers” who are deluded into assuming their ideas are being transmitted “to the class” when they appear in a journal of equally restricted readership, or on the html files of some site on the Internet.

More recently we have written: Our earnest hope is to engage with those new forces which do come to a consciousness of the need to overthrow the system, to give them a political compass, something to rally around, whilst at the same time, we seek dialogue with those forces which already exist to actively cooperate where possible, agree to disagree where necessary, and ultimately to unite as history inexorably moves on and a real class movement develops.

We welcome anyone interested in this vital task to come and discuss with us.

As capitalism’s economic crisis deepens our rulers are determined to make the working class pay for it by increasing exploitation and reducing wages and living conditions.

All across the world, the capitalists and their political puppets are also trying to prevent any united working class fightback by widening divisions in the working class, such as nationality, race, ethnicity, religion, gender and sexual preference. The xenophobia whipped up before and after the Brexit campaign, the Trump election campaign and the election campaigns of nationalist governments in Hungary and Poland are a few recent examples of what is happening and what is to come.

At the same time national states are trying to push the crisis onto capitalists of other states or blocs of states by trade wars. And history tells us that trade wars are the prelude to shooting wars. While imperialist proxy wars continue to rage in the Middle East, Africa and Eastern Europe, and while a new conflict with Iran is being stoked up, increasingly intense global conflicts are being prepared.

Nationalism is the main tool being used to recruit workers to support their rulers in these wars. No faction of the capitalist class is worth supporting and none is “a lesser evil”! The alternative is not to do nothing. There are already voices being raised under the banner of “No war but the class war!” to challenge the fate that the capitalists are preparing for us.

Join them in a public meeting to find out more and make your own contribution:

Bordiga Beyond the Myth by Onorato Damen is now available in English translation (it already exists in Italian, French and Spanish). It contains 168 pages and includes 114 footnotes to guide English readers plus 4 appendices, one of which is the first full translation in English of Bordiga's famous letter to Karl Korsch. The price of £7.25 includes postage and packaging in the UK.

Recent publications

Aurora is the broadsheet of the ICT for the interventions amongst the working class. It is published and distributed in several countries and languages. So far it has been distributed in UK, France, Italy, Canada, USA, Colombia.

Journal of the Communist Workers’ Organisation -- Why not subscribe to get the articles whilst they are still current and help the struggle for a society free from exploitation, war and misery? Joint subscriptions to Revolutionary Perspectives (3 issues) and Aurora (our agitational bulletin - 4 issues) are £15 in the UK, €24 in Europe and $30 in the rest of the World.

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Brief news

Strikes are rapidly spreading beyond of the maquiladoras in Matamoros, Tamaulipas

2019-02-07

Strikes are rapidly spreading beyond of the maquiladoras in Matamoros, Tamaulipas as workers are demanding better pay and working conditions. Workers at more than 27 non-maquiladora businesses walked off the job yesterday alone. As noted previously, this strike action represents the real threat to the bourgeoisie who fear it will spread not only to other border state maquiladoras but across the country.Over the last several weeks workers at 48 maquiladoras in Matamoros, many making as little $1 US and hour, had walked off the job demanding a 20% wage increase and a 30,000-peso bonus. A paltry demand for impoverished workers virtually enslaved in oppressive working conditions with the lowest wages in the Western World. With this new spread of strike action yesterday, workers are referring to their growing “movement” as Movimiento 20/30 to reflect the previous demands of the maquiladora workers.But behind the immediate demand for higher wages is a growing protest directed against the union taskmasters who work at the behest of the boss. mcclatchydc.com At Blanquita, a water purification company, 170 workers walked off the job as they denounced not only exploitation of their employer but the indifference of the union to their cause as well.